Sharon J. Riley
Managing editor
Sharon is an award-winning journalist based in Edmonton. Her writing has also been published by The Walrus, Harper’s, The Tyee and Maisonneuve, among others. Her work for The Narwhal has been nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award and a Digital Publishing Award. She was also named a finalist in the 2017 National Magazine Awards' Best New Magazine Writer category, was a 2017 recipient of the Access Copyright Foundation's Marian Hebb Research Grant for literary arts and won the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism in 2020. Sharon was born and raised in rural Alberta, and if she's not at her computer she's probably in the Rockies with her family.
Stories by Sharon J. Riley
Alberta covered $20 million in unpaid land rent for oil and gas operators in 2020
9 min. readThe bill for delinquent companies — picked up almost entirely by taxpayers — is up...
Here’s why Alberta’s ban on mountaintop-removal mining won’t affect proposed coal mines in the Rockies
When the government said it would put an ‘outright ban on mountaintop mining,’ many Albertans...
A tale of two provinces: how coal mining plowed ahead in the B.C. Rockies while Alberta hit the brakes
Mountaintop-removal coal mining is much more prevalent in B.C. than Alberta. To understand why, you...
9 things that haven’t changed since Alberta’s about-face on coal mining policy
The United Conservative Party was backed into a corner on its decision to open up...
How a public uprising caused a province built on fossil fuels to reverse course on coal mining
Country music stars, conservationists and tens of thousands of Albertans came together to roll back...
An Alberta county drafted big tourism plans. Then came the coal leases
Clearwater County set its economic sights on attracting visitors to the eastern slopes of the...
Alberta’s ‘back door’ plan to free up billions of litres of water for coal mines raises alarm
Amid concerns about droughts, selenium pollution, at-risk species and Indigenous consultation, the Alberta government is...
‘Transparency is critical’: buried report raises questions about oilsands bird monitoring program
A previously undisclosed expert analysis, obtained through a freedom of information request, details how Alberta’s...
Alberta is planning new mountaintop-removal coal mines. Here’s what that looks like
Debate has swirled as Alberta opens up a large swath of the Rocky Mountains' eastern...
